TheMightyJello: Me?
Crawleymang: Yes you, I know you write
Crawleymang: how good are you at writing stories
Crawleymang: in the sense that you can look at a guy and say
TheMightyJello: ...and say...?
Crawleymang: "hey.. I bet I can tell what kind of adventure he's had or is going to have today"
TheMightyJello: Oh, that. I can't really say about that, don't have much experience. I can come up with stories, plots, twists, things... I could probably do that. I'm usually the worst with beginnings since you've got to use a "so we start with" rather than a "and then".
Crawleymang: well
Crawleymang: blahblahba ANYWAY here's my idea
Crawleymang: alright so ordinarily I had been thinking of just holding tournaments and maybe eventually developing some kind of organized thing
Crawleymang: of course the motives would be more OOC than IC because of this
TheMightyJello: But that's your style, eh?
TheMightyJello: "No bullshit, cut to the action."
Crawleymang: well YEAH but I think I've found a way to merge story.. cause no matter who it is.. everybody can appreciate a good story
TheMightyJello: F'shure.
Having a good story for your character gives him a reason to be where he is, and a reason to be in the fights. It's also what makes the badass parts so badass, because it's more believable when a person isn't dragging themselves through hell just because "I don't feel like losing today!!!"
Crawleymang: exactly
Crawleymang: But I still wanted to keep the focus primarily on fighting
Crawleymang: so I remembered a wrestling game I played where.. depending on what you do.. how you do it.. or whatever.. the storyline could change and you could be going down a different path
TheMightyJello: Really? Cool. Fighting games like that are fun because it makes you want to play it through to get all the storylines, even without factoring in the awesomeness of beating someone's face in.
Crawleymang: yeah, so... I thought that I could blanket a tournament with something like that with a central plot.. and everyone has an individual plot.
But I didn't want to script the whole thing like a complete play.
Instead I though that each person would have their own individual reason for being.. wherever. And a storyline could be constructed for them.. and is subject to change depending on how they fight... and how they end the fight.. or some of the things they say and how they respond to so and so.. and blahblabhalh
For example ..
Crawleymang: You want to enter the tournament so you enter with the character Joshua
(I don't know anything about your character so I'm just making stuff up)
And after putting down the registration card there's a space for "motive"
I figured it'd be something vague like revenge, justice, honor, power, money.... and so on... so one would just be put down
And your bio is read to determine exactly what kind of guy Joshua is.. combined with his motive.. to be able to construct a little story for him
Crawleymang: Of course alignment comes into play so he could start out good and end up completely bad... or whatever
TheMightyJello: That's cool and all for one-shot characters and that, but people who are using their actual RP characters in that tend to make up their own motives for doing so... and sort of pointing to a guy and saying "you want revenge against him" probably wouldn't fit in with that, you know?
Though something like 'money' would be easier... you could have people address the fighters between rounds, offering bribes for taking a dive or mafia men threatening violence if they go down because all bets are riding on them.
Crawleymang: well.. I figured it wouldn't be a one shot thing.. after all my place is as you described it (a place of normalness)
I figured all of the stories would tie in to a big long timeline event
Tournament
Journey
Tournament
Journey
Tournament
TheMightyJello: Somebody fighting for honor, or to be the champ probably wouldn't go for dirty, underhanded tricks because they're there for the sense of accomplishment. They could be put in situations where it would be easy for them to cripple an opponent before the round, and see how they act.
Crawleymang: of course all of the story will be done in tournament format.. even in journey..
TheMightyJello: Ah, okay.
I was stuck thinking about the 'normal' tournament setup, where people enter their characters and s**t happens. Though if you're planning on making sort of an entire roleplay out of tournaments (like seasons of a sport, returning champions, training for the next fight, all that stuff) it makes more sense to do it that way.
Crawleymang: for example Journey storyline
8 characters
2 for justice
2 for honor
2 for Self
2 for evil
And the justice people see the threat of the badguys.. bad guys want to carry out that threat
The self-serving people are anti-heros that could go either way
the honorable people often suffer from internal conflict
Of course depending on how they deal with their "opponents" these things could change
TheMightyJello: I think I see it now. I remember a couple fighting games in the past that would do things like that.
"You head to the mountains to look for your old master, though when you arrive the door is broken and there's smoke coming from inside the house. You rush in, and find an assassin standing over the old man."
[ fight ensues]
Crawleymang: YEAH
Crawleymang: exactly
Crawleymang: it's like "this is the situation... so how will you handle it?"
Crawleymang: of course just because someone loses doesn't exactly mean their storyline is thrown away... I figured (depending on some factors) they'd be NPC-ed into doing blhablabhalh
TheMightyJello: Okay. So basically instead of a tournament atmopshere you're looking more for some scenes that would lead up to WHY the people are fighting.
Like that would be the story from one side, the other side being the reasons why the 'assassin' was there which may or may not be 'evil' reasons.
Crawleymang: well for the journey storylines yes
Crawleymang: the tournament storylines will probably be a lot more... "calmer" than the journey storylines
Crawleymang: since they take place in arenas and stuff
Crawleymang: and are not subject to take place in a burning building
Crawleymang: but it's still tournament format for everything... so you could lose.. and that would be the end of your story for now (unless you were npc-ed to the end or wherever)
TheMightyJello: That could definately make things interesting. Much better than just shoving people into a ring and saying "fight him" at times.
Plus you could then have things like "as you glance at the headshots of the contestants you see the face of the man who attacked your master that night on the mountain".
Crawleymang: yeah
Crawleymang: it would give the tournaments themselves a lot more drama
TheMightyJello: Yep.
Sort of the whole Guile vs. Bison bit. "You killed my friend Charlie!"
Crawleymang: and the journeys are an opportunity for hte person to give the character depth
Crawleymang: *the
TheMightyJello: Yep.
TheMightyJello: And outside of the tournament segments a loss would just mean a loss, not that they were out of the bracket entirely. They'd just take a different path than they would have if they won.
Crawleymang: well they could be included in the story.. but I'd be thinking that they'd be getting a lot of npc action
Crawleymang: since.. the object is still always to win the fight
TheMightyJello: ::nod::
TheMightyJello: Sounds like it'd be a lot of fun to see how that plays out. You've got a good idea there.
Crawleymang: i.e. Joshua and Reiko meet under.. certain circumstances and fight. Reiko loses, but decides to accompany Joshua out of interest or.. blahbalh
Crawleymang: (which means that an NPC might get beat up.. or possibly killed)
Crawleymang: then again I'd leave the killing to the actual fight itself
TheMightyJello: (I can see getting killed making a pretty big stink, but if they're getting NPC'd for a loss we can all assume that whoever beat them is 'better' at least for a segment of the story, so if somebody shows up and beats up the NPC'd character and the other character has to fight him then, it wouldn't seem so off)
Crawleymang: yeah that's what I mean. Like... (sakura loses early on in the "tournament" but accompanies Ryu to the end of the journey) Sakura tries to take to take on Bison first and gets beaten down giving Ryu more motivation and reason to fight
Crawleymang: RPCs being ryu and bison
TheMightyJello: A: "You've beaten me! I'll regain my honor by helping you out for a while."
B: "Okay, cool."
C: "I kick A's a**!"
B: "You beat up my assistant! Vengance!"
Crawleymang: yes
TheMightyJello: Totally works.
Crawleymang: now, that is why I need a writer
Crawleymang: or possibly a hand full
Crawleymang: working like babies in a sweatshop to make it a success
TheMightyJello: XD Yeah, I can see that.
Crawleymang: and there could also be side stories cause I had other ideas for other "regular" tournaments I wanted to do.
Like a 5 man team "dojo challenge"
and bringing Iron Maiden back
Crawleymang: or just a "survival" challenge
TheMightyJello: Well, you're probably going to have mods who are checking for fairness in the fights and thus have to read over everything anyways. The ones you seem to be using (Shou, B) should easily be able to whip up some storylines for what happens next.
I'd be happy to help with concepts, but I've been kind of busy so I probably couldn't sit there and write it all out for everyone all the time.
Crawleymang: I originally thought to do the "quest tournament" with swords like soul calibur or last blade.. just as a test to see how it would run
Crawleymang: but then I remembered what I made G-KO for
TheMightyJello: Kicking a** and taking names?
Crawleymang: well yes.. but unarmed unpowered combat
TheMightyJello: ::nod:: A noble face-smashing effort.
